Tim Lincecum

The election for the Sons of Sam Horn government would be an ever-evolving oligarchy. David Ortiz (1-for-3) would be the honorary Papi emeritus, Dustin Pedroia would be the Secretary of Sparky Anklebiters, Alejandro De Aza (2-for-4, 1 run, 3 RBIs) would be a stunt double in case of an assassination attempt, Pablo Sandoval (2-for-4, 2 runs) would be the ambassador to the International House of Pancakes, Wade Miley (6 1/3 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners, 8 Ks, ERA at 4.88) would be in charge of the Armed Farces and the election for president would be a popularity contest between Brock Holt (4-for-5, 2 runs, 2 RBIs and his 2nd homer, hitting .309) and Mookie Betts (3-for-5, 2 runs, 1 RBI) after Jackie Bradley Jr. was told to take a walk. For a half season last year, Holt hit .327 with three homers and six steals. So, he’s done this over an extended period of time before, and yesterday was the first day the Red Sox really have looked themselves all year, so I highly doubt Holt will fall much lower than the two hole in the lineup any time soon. If he’s available in your league, I’d definitely grab him. Brock Holt! Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Son of a plumber, the real American dream has returned for another week of two start scrutiny. I’m here to do the dirty work. I drop the bionic elbow on your dome to enlighten you to the two start knowledge that I possess. I’ve seen hard times recently, and it’s due to Rick Flair, Nate Karns, Mike Foltynewicz, and Tom Cruise! You don’t know what hard times are Daddy! Hard times is when the factory workers are out of work and got 4 or 5 kids. Hard times are when the Auto Workers are out of work! Hard times are when a man who’s worked at a company for 30 years gets a watch and gets told a computer can do his job! Hard times Daddy! I’ve been stuck in hard times. Well screw Mike Foltynewicz until he tricks me into believing in him again. We’re back this week and it’s no holds barred we’re taking the folding chairs out of the front row and fighting dirty. We’re going with the theme of 1980’s and early 90’s wrestling. This is pretty much the last time I watched wrestling. They ruined it with all the complex storylines and other non-sense. Remember when it was just sort of some meaningless beef and you got to watch them duke it out on Saturday morning? In my humble opinion it was the best it ever was, but what do I know?

Happy Friday everyone. It’s nice being in on a Friday. Tuesday and Friday nights are usually the most jam packed nights of the DFS week with plenty of large tournaments and Friday tends to house the week’s biggest events including qualifiers aplenty. Good luck to those chasing Q’s this evening. Despite being a Friday, it’s more like a whacky Wednesday. I guess we can call it a freaky Friday. For those that don’t subscribe to the hitter-tron and stream-o-nator, first of all, I’m sorry you’re losing your league. Second of all, what is the matter with you? Thirdly, there’s some craziness going down tonight and I’ll fill you in a little and explain my sentiments. There’s something I can’t ever recall seeing with the stream-o-nator tonight and that’s not a single pitcher with over a $6.7 value. In fact, there are only 9 pitchers with any positive value tonight, which leaves 21 pitchers in the negative with three of them in the negative $30 range. Those three pitchers aren’t even starting in Coors! What does all this mean? Expect a ton of offense tonight because there’s a ton of shizz pitchers throwing. I would guess tonight might be one of those nights where you can score 150 DraftKings points and not cash. The other fun thing tonight is Giancarlo Stanton in Coors field. The superhuman crusher of baseballs checks in at a very rare $100+ value tonight. Just imagine what Giancarlo could do if he were on the Rockies. *Wavy lines* I was so excited to draft Giancarlo #1 overall this year. He hit 30 homers before the all-star break and then his hamstring tore in half, what a bummer. *Wavy lines* Yea, that sounds about right, very Tulo-esque. No matter, he’s in the hitter friendly confines tonight and will be appointment television for me. At $5,800 tonight, I’d say he’s worth every penny. I expected him to be over $6,000 to be honest. Look at us, bargain shopping like a soccer mom. Let’s take a look at some other players to roster and see if there’s any starters worth rostering this Friday.

Today’s starting pitching options leaves a lot to be desired in your DraftKings entry knowing that you have to two starters. However, one of my favorite young pitchers is starting, Michael Wacha. The obvious choice for your first pitcher is Tyson Ross, as he is pitching at home in Petco Park. When it comes to my second pitcher, I see Wacha is 7-0 with a 1.87 ERA and 1.04 WHIP on the season. His overall numbers look great except for his K/9 rate. It is an unimpressive 5.46, and even makes me wince when I see pitchers like Shane Greene at 5.80. The Dodgers will be his best opponent today, so when considering one of my young favorites in DFS, I’ll need to dig a little deeper and look at the less obvious statistics. In his last two starts he’s faced the Royals and Mets, both on the road. The Royals are a good hitting team, and the Mets were a good hitting team that has cooled off a bit. In those two games, Wacha allowed 9 hits in 54 plate appearances. He only allowed 2 earned runs in 14 innings pitched, and batters hit .180 against him. Wacha had a meager 9 strikeouts and allowed 4 walks in that span. This is a small sample size of course, but I like to look how pitchers have recently done when facing an upcoming juggernaut. But the main reason I am sold on Wacha as a good choice on DraftKings today is his career home/away splits. He is considerably a better pitcher at home in St. Louis. In 22 games started, he is 9-1 with a 2.31 ERA, a 1.00 WHIP in 120 innings pitched. He has a 3.43 K/BB rate, and a 7.70 K/9 rate. I dug through a few more uncommon stats, and found that Wacha has never faced the Dodgers before. I gotta Wacha fine line at that point and rely on the above mentioned. So although there are starting pitchers that are priced similarly as Wacha, I’ll go with the guy who has only lost once in 22 career home starts, and is facing a team he’s never pitched against. Take a look at some of my other DraftKings’ picks today.

Welcome to Razzball, here is your pitching menu for this morning and afternoon. First off, we have plenty of arms to choose from on the Early Bird Special but that stops serving shortly. I can and will go over the choices on there later if you’d like but for now, I’d like to talk to you about our special for this evening: Jake Odorizzi. For just $8,000, you get a delicious splits difference in that Jake has a 2.87 xFIP and a K-BB% of 20.4% on the year against left-handed bats. Given that the Mariners boast around seven of those in their lineup on a given night, this is by far the most bang for your buck that we have on the menu tonight and if you choose correct sides around it, he might end up being able to feed your whole family for, like, a long, long time. Why am I wearing a tight, sheer tank top? Um, *covers kids’ ears* Razzball is what we call in the industry a ‘Breastaurant’. Woah, don’t talk about my chest like that. It’s only this small because I haven’t landed my big gig in Hollywood yet to pay for the goods! *End Scene* – In all seriousness, Jake looks to be a fine cash game get for a very small slate of pitching on this evening and is probably my SP1 given the price and the ugliness surrounding him. In all seriousness part deux, we’ll be covering a bit of the mid-day/morning slate because I have a bigger window to talk about it. In all seriousness part triple, I tip my cap to all of those who have given their lives for us. Your service is never forgotten. But with that, let’s move on to what we came to do. Here’s my seething hot takes for this Monday’s DK slate…

Sorry my loyal musicfiles, but this week I’ve moved on from our weekly music discussion mixed in with some fantasy baseball edu-ma-cation, to a weekly discussion of my favorite of all foods….the all-mighty fast food cheeseburger. I’m guessing regular commenter Happy Vegans will have to talk about boca burgers or something made of grass. Sorry homie, your avatar still has a rocking stache. Take solace in that. Either way we’ll once again awkwardly navigate our way through the two-start pitching options for the week and mix in some auxiliary discussion of the delicious, greasy, delicacy we call the cheeseburger. If you’re kosher remove the cheese, cool? Looking forward, we have some seriously tasty doubles piled up in the top tiers this week and some dollar menu values spread across the middle tiers where streamers are to be had in super-sized portions. Some one and done guys that might be In N Out of your lineup depending on the matchup. There’s also a whole lot more garbage in a bag then there has been in previous weeks…. I know, I know, I’m so topical I should be an ointment! Quite a few streamers I like this week, one in particular is Mariners Lefty Roenis Elias. Over his last 15 starts dating back to last July Elias’ ERA is 2.48 with a 7.78 k/9, 3.56 BB/9, and a .65 HR/9. His pheriperals scream regression (3.71 FIP, 4.02 xFIP, 1.36 WHIP), but they don’t scream awful either. His control has improved this season and he’s faced some solid lineups thus far in Minnesota, Baltimore, and Houston. Roenis is slated to go against two clubs this week that are middle of the road when it comes to hitting lefties, in the Rays and Indians. But I like his chances to continue his string of quality starts. Now that’s a tasty burger!

So after back to back weeks of discussing two of the more trendsetting genres in Hip-Hop and Grunge. I have gone off the reservation and devoted the tiers and peripheral discussion to one of my favorites groups of all-time, Philly hitmakers Daryl Hall and John Oates. In other words, I’m trying very hard to not exceed 12 comments. Hey, it’s just like my weekday job on the soccer site! Then again maybe you too enjoy hitting the freeway with the top down in your Sebring convertible and the cool sounds of the dynamic duo pumping through your speakers. Good God, someone get me a peach flavored mystic. I’m going to need to hydrate for all the cougars who just swooned after reading that description. Not for nothing, but there is no better way to serenade a cougar then to pull up in a low power american convertible, top down, with Sara Smile on the stereo. I be collecting spanx for days kid. All I’m saying is watch your Mom around me, true player for real, ask my dog Smokey. Or you could ask your mom…. This is all nonsense and besides the point. We’re here dearly beloved to discuss the double-dipping masters of blue eyed soul, mixed in with some two start pitchers right? Well bad news…the two start pitching options this week are sort of limited after the first 8 or so arms. Yay Mike Fiers! Seriously Fiers is so meta. Because I typically want to yell FIRE! upon glancing at my ratios after each of his starts.

As some of the regular readers on Saturday mornings might have noticed, there has been a trend of “don’t panic” or “it’s only April/May” or even “your mom”. I’m here to finally break that trend. Maybe. We are now six scoring (almost!) periods into the books, which means, according to my calculations, that we have six weeks in the books. That’s about the extent of my math skills, so take that with a grain of salt. If you’ve held firm (for the most part, and oh, that’s what she said) thus far, you should be commended for it. Streaming situations and the tragedy that is our bullpens don’t necessarily count, as those are always fluid situations. I’m focusing more on the guys like Andrew McCutchen, Billy Hamilton, Chris Sale, Evan Gattis… the types of players who aren’t performing, but you necessarily can’t do much about except pout. And boy have I been pouting. Obviously, you can’t drop them, but you can at least, at this point in the season, realize what you need, what you want, and start strategizing in going after it. If that’s a big trade, taking some chances at other positions that are lacking a bit with free agency, now is the time to start making those plans. Like the plans I have with your mom. (Trend not broken folks!)

Follow me after the jump to take a look back at what was week four AND a look forward on all things Razzball, including some player suggestions for next week, straight from Razzball’s Streamonator, Hitter-Tron, and DFSBot!

Logan Morrison performed some late night heroics yesterday as he went 2-for-5 with two RBI including a walk off home run off Dan Otero in the 11th inning to beat the A’s. LoMo now has three home runs and is batting .364 in the past week, and yes, of course he’s trending on twitter. Trending hard. His twitter feed is blowing up like a Michael Bay film and after struggling in April he’s really come alive in May. Logan’s hit four of his five dingers in May, and is slashing .385/.448/1.000 (compared to .197/.238/.250 in April) with a 1.448 OPS. Yes, more please! Small sample sizes sure are fun! Based on his career norms his .238 BABIP is certainly low, but so is the 11.9 K%, however, the 37.1 hard hit percentage looks real nice. You know I can make the stats tell you whatever I want, but the fact is LoMo is a hot little potato right now. He’s hit safely in every game he’s played this month except one, and he’s homered in four of them. Grey told you to BUY this week and he’s available in most leagues. When asked about his heroic walk off homer, Logan admitted he didn’t do it for the fame, the fortune, or even for the stats, he did it for the followers. So have a @CupOfLoMo with last night’s hero, and pick him up if you need some power at the corner.

Yesterday, Evan Gattis went 2-for-4, 3 runs, 4 RBIs with his 5th and 6th homers, while hitting four homers in the last three days. After the game, Gattis likened this streak to the five red lights in a row where the first car to stop had broken windshield wipers and Gattis had a squeegee. Adding, “Right now, I’m swinging the squeegee as good as ever. There was one guy, Non-Tall Paul, who claimed to get a six-red-light streak back in ’98. Non-Tall Paul reminds me of Altuve, actually. Size-wise. Not smell-wise. He smelled of grapes. Very, very rancid grapes.” Okay, Gattis! This weekend Gattis reminds us how ridiculous it was that people wanted to drop him in the first week-plus when he was striking out like Non-Tall Paul at a plus-sized model runway show. I think someone even asked me in the first two weeks if I had revised projections for Gattis. Guys and five girl readers (we have a new one! Hey, lady!), the season isn’t even a month old yet. You need to trust your players. Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball: